


if the right one don't get you

by beili, Val Mora (valmora)



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Bisexual Characters, Consent Issues, Eavesdropping, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Food, M/M, Sexual Tension, Undercover As Gay, attitudes towards homosexuality that vary extensively, casefic, period-atypical attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-08 01:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8825104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beili/pseuds/beili, https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: Napoleon and Illya go undercover at a bar, and then go undercover again when new information is revealed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [el3anorrigby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/el3anorrigby/gifts).



> The title is from the last verse of the song “Sixteen Tons”. 
> 
> A warning to those with **food issues** : Food is described at some length at various points in the story.
> 
> A warning to those with **issues regarding consent** is included at the end.  
>     
> Many thanks to [Sweety_Mutant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweety_Mutant/profile) for the beta!

The problem was that Marcus Ekland, although very willing to help U.N.C.L.E., was known at the establishment this particular casual lover of his frequented.

The establishment in question was an upmarket hotel in Midtown that had a restaurant-bar on the ground floor that was open to the public. The restaurant, with the charming name of Hare & Hound, was fashioned after an American imagining of an English country pub, with a great deal of dark wood and bad faux-lithographs of hunting scenes.

Napoleon would have pegged it as a cruising spot within a few minutes of entering if he hadn't already known that was what it was. It was mostly the casual way several of the diners and men at the bar – the ones who looked like locals rather than out-of-town businessmen, though there were a couple of those too – watched him with lingering head-to-toe appraisal.

He gave one of them a heavy look and bumped his shoulder into Illya's, an attempt at indicating that he was taken, if not unavailable, and Illya played along beautifully.

"Yes?" he said to Napoleon, turning and looking down just enough that they were gazing at each other, there in the entryway; Napoleon admired Illya's sense of scene.

"Nothing," Napoleon told him, letting himself smile, and turned to the host, who was wearing a look of professionally impersonal good humor.

"Will you be dining with us tonight, or will you stay at the bar?" the host asked.

"Mm, dining," Napoleon said, before Illya did. Illya's accent was Westernizing, of course, now that he was spending most of his time in New York. Napoleon suspected it would end up somewhere on the North American side of the Atlantic given enough time, but for now, when Illya opened his mouth it was still matryoshka dolls and vodka all the way down.

If Napoleon sometimes thought of that voice in that accent asking to kiss him, or for Napoleon to give it to him harder, that was enjoyable but immaterial. And for now, if they were trying to remain relatively unnoticed – Illya turned his fair share of heads as they followed the host to a cozy little booth by the north wall – the accent was a liability.

The booth gave them both a fairly good view of the interior of the restaurant, especially the door, and it didn't take long for the waiter to arrive and ask if they wanted something to drink.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the kind of place where one ordered wine with dinner. Napoleon settled for bourbon, and Illya had single malt Scotch.

After the drinks arrived and they'd taken appropriately appreciative sips, Illya leaned forward and said, "May I try yours?"

Napoleon nudged his glass a few inches towards Illya's hand on the dark wooden table. "Be my guest."

"Thank you," Illya said, moving his own glass closer to Napoleon in obvious permission, then picked up Napoleon's and sipped.

Illya’s Scotch, when Napoleon tasted it, was - warm, a bit nutty, and very dry. Not too complex for his tastes. Napoleon put it back on Illya’s side of the table with a click and let his hand linger there, as though reluctant to let go, though his own was better.

“Not bad,” he said finally, and picked his own glass up, though he was reluctant to drink from it and mix the tastes.

“You too,” Illya said, and they shared a look of mutual comprehension and amusement. If the drinking from each other’s glasses hadn’t done it, that look would convince any onlookers that they were lovers. 

Illya hadn’t said anything, condemnatory or otherwise, about how Napoleon’s CIA file said he was a confirmed bisexual, but Napoleon wasn’t certain Illya wouldn’t have a nasty little attack if a man approached him. He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure.

He opened his menu and examined the offerings. Roast beef with potatoes, fish and chips, ploughman’s lunch, shepherd’s pie, steak and kidney pie, and oh, yes, a salad. With the option of cheese, port, and/or sherry for afters. Napoleon decided to despair, because the alternative was probably remembering passing through London in ‘47, and he tried not to remember his time in the army, except where keeping track of which pieces of art he’d diverted was concerned.

“Do you want to share?” Illya offered. 

“What’re you thinking?”

“The steak and kidney pie,” Illya said.

“Fish,” Napoleon said, and closed the menu.

“All right.” Illya looked expectantly at the door to the kitchen, like a dog who had heard its master coming home.

They ordered when the waiter returned, not too much later, and continued to watch the crowd; Napoleon was careful to keep his posture open but half-turned towards Illya: they were, after all, discussing the men in the restaurant.

“By the bar,” Napoleon said. “Five-ten, double-breasted suit, green tie.”

“No,” said Illya. “You just like his clothes.”

“Guilty as charged,” Napoleon said. There were ten men in the room who could’ve been Ekland’s lover: medium-to-tall, big-shouldered, dark hair and eyes, no distinguishing features. 

“I could tell you about what’s _under_ his clothes,” Ekland had said in interview, helplessly, but Napoleon had no inclination to seduce someone for this particular job, and lifting wallets was easier anyway.

“Your papers still say Ian, right?” Napoleon said, throwing back the rest of his drink. What an insult to the bourbon.

“The English ones,” Illya said, guarded. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m going to go talk to some of them,” Napoleon said. “Finish your drink; I need an excuse.”

Illya made a face and drained his Scotch.

“Good boy,” Napoleon said, smirking. Illya just rolled his eyes rather than getting his hackles up.

Napoleon went to the bar and leaned up against the wood next to the man he considered Candidate Number One for the lover. The problem was that Ekland didn’t know his real name: the man’s wallet had contained a New York driver’s license for a Mr. Michael Gardner, the same as the name he gave Ekland, but none of the photographs to that name that Analysis had turned up matched. They’d had a sketch artist go at it, but Ekland hadn’t been satisfied.

“Lovely night out,” Napoleon said, tapping the surface of the bar with one finger a few times - not Morse code, just an aimless rhythm meant to distract him from his wallet being lifted and tucked into Napoleon’s own pocket.

“Better inside here,” the man said, smiling over. “What’re you having?”

“Ah,” Napoleon said, “I’m bourbon, and my friend over there is having Scotch.” He gestured to Illya with his shoulder, and used the moment while the man was examining Illya to get out and examine the man’s driver’s license: Jacob Kaeppel. Unlikely, then.

“Not to my taste, but thanks for the recommendation,” probably-Kaeppel said, while Napoleon slipped his wallet back into place. 

“Not for everyone,” Napoleon said cheerfully, and signaled for the bartender.

 

There was a high chance that they’d find Gardner that night - Ekland said that before he and Gardner had taken to meeting up more frequently on their own terms, they’d met at the Hare & Hound on Wednesday nights, and he’d seen Gardner there on Wednesdays for a couple of months before that. As long as Gardner hadn’t decided to change his routine, he’d likely come. So there Napoleon and Illya were. 

“Polo shirt,” Illya said.

“Ekland didn’t describe him as wearing them,” Napoleon said doubtfully, but the man in the polo shirt - tall, dark-haired, strong-jawed, and close enough to the sketch artist’s attempt that Napoleon could see why Ekland would have been dissatisfied with it - was looking around in the restaurant, though not for Ekland, Napoleon didn’t think.

Napoleon watched him and allowed himself to get caught blatantly looking, then made a show of looking him over. The man in the polo shirt smirked, looked Napoleon over in turn, clearly evaluated Illya, and then dismissed them. Not what he was looking for? Or playing some kind of hard to get, maybe.

“Go buy him a drink,” Illya said. Napoleon’s body rebelled with a kind of instinctive nausea: he wouldn’t take orders to seduce someone he didn’t want, even from Illya, whom he trusted with his life. Then he remembered they were there under false pretenses and he stood and sauntered towards where the man had just been seated at a table for two, alone.

Napoleon passed him on his way to the other seat and lifted his wallet on the way, then sat. 

“Hello,” he said. “Can I get you a drink?”

“On your behalf?” said the man. “Or on your...friend’s?”

“Both,” Napoleon said, and the man smiled.

“Martini,” he said.

Napoleon went to the bar and took the opportunity to check the wallet. Identification for Michael Gardner. He paid for the drink himself, and returned the wallet on his way back with the martini.

“Thank you,” Gardner said. “So you and your friend are here together? And what can I call you?”

“Jack,” Napoleon said. “And he’s Ian.”

“Ian, huh,” Gardner said. “Mike. Looks like you should get back and order your dinners.”

The server was talking to Illya, sure enough, though it was probably to apologize for the wait.

“He knows what I want,” Napoleon said, making it sound like innuendo.

“Clearly,” Gardner said dryly, and took a sip of his drink.

 

Ultimately Gardner insisted on meeting “Ian,” so Napoleon took him to talk to Illya - which was just as well; the food was getting cold - and Illya somehow managed to not fly into a rage when Gardner said, “I know he likes it, but I wouldn’t’ve figured you if you weren’t with him.”

“We all have secrets,” Illya said, shaking his hand and holding it for a little too long. Illya was taller than Gardner, of course, but not by so much he towered over him, which was good. Gardner felt like a man who liked to be in control, which made sense if he really was, as their intel indicated, head of laundering operations for THRUSH in the Northeast. Illya being big enough to physically control him would have been an issue for a man like Gardner - not that Illya couldn’t, of course, but that was training as well as size and strength. 

“Good point,” Gardner said, and slid into the seat next to Napoleon, boxing him in. A little power play, there, Napoleon thought. Ekland hadn’t mentioned that tendency, but maybe he was used to it, or maybe it was that he’d always come alone and Gardner was trying to make a point to ‘Ian.’

Napoleon ate his dinner, including the half of Illya’s that had been scrupulously set aside for him, while deliberately keeping the conversation flowing freely and easily. 

Somewhere around the last of the French fries, Gardner said, “Ian, I notice your accent doesn’t match your name.”

Illya snorted. “Ivan Petrovich Semenovis not a name that gets job interviews,” he said. “So after my defection I changed it.”

“Defected, really?” Gardner said, leaning forward. “That must have been interesting. How did that happen?”

Illya looked at him, flat. “You’re invited to our bed. Don’t ask about what’s not in it,” he said, and Napoleon’s mouth went dry with desire. _Our bed_ , like a habit, hinting at shared lives. He’d had a few longer-term liaisons before the CIA caught up with him, but nothing so stable and trusting and together to warrant that _our_.

He and Illya had shared sleeping spaces a few times on missions. Illya woke early, and always grumpy; he drank tea thick as pitch; he read newspapers in the evening and scientific or political journals over breakfast. Napoleon could easily kiss behind his ear as Illya surfaced from asleep to awake, and not be doing it just to get Illya to let his barriers down enough for Napoleon to steal his art.

Illya didn’t have any art, or nice clothes, or, anymore, KGB secrets. It would just be for -

He let it go. The honorable ones - the really honorable ones, not the ones who used honor-based guilt as a sexual fetish - were never interested. Illya would never let him, and Napoleon knew when to cut his losses.

(He’d loved a little Zhou dynasty bronze bowl, once; it had been small enough to fit in his hand, probably looted grave goods, and had been in the collection of a German Sinophile whose house had been occupied by Napoleon’s unit for a bit in ‘49. He hadn’t been able to stop picking the bowl up, tracing the monstrous, delicate lines of the _taotie_ face in the bronze and being grateful that no one had stolen it from the house before him. He’d had to leave it with everything else in the apartment in Marseilles; he hoped that it had been given to a museum, but when he tried to look for it after his capture he’d been stonewalled. They’d thought, probably rightly, that he’d try to get it back.)

“My apologies,” Gardner said smoothly, turning his palms outward. “I can see that’s sensitive.” 

“Sorry,” Napoleon said, not meaning it but making sure his voice implied he did. 

 

They managed to keep Gardner strung along through the rest of dinner, too, and after the check was paid, he suggested they go to one of the rooms upstairs in the hotel for the night.

“Mm,” Napoleon said, and made a show of making eye contact with Illya in that way that long-married couples did where they confirmed things with each other, without speaking. “Not tonight. But you come here on Wednesdays every week? Next week, definitely.”

“I’ll be around,” Gardner said, then reached up to cup Napoleon’s jaw and brush his thumb over Napoleon’s lips, possessively and without prompting. “It’s not nice to tease.”

“We like to make sure the ones we invite have good manners,” Illya said sharply, standing and looming over him, while Napoleon jerked away. His instincts screamed a couple of joint locks to put Gardner into; he ignored them.

“Get out,” Napoleon said. 

Gardner stood. “My mistake,” he said. He was holding his hands open again as he backed away carefully, and then he went to the other side of the room.

They left, walking to the train station and then taking it a few stops, with a change of line in the middle, to lose all but the most dedicated pursuers. They got off at a stop that wasn’t near UNCLE offices, and walked to a coffee shop near Illya’s place. Illya ordered coffee for both of them and sat down, but not before eyeing the newspapers hung over a rack to the side.

Napoleon flipped open Gardner’s wallet. Two hundred dollars in twenties, driver’s license, a single blank check from a large New York bank, and a few business cards, all for people or businesses in the city. 

“I think he has a full set of alternate papers,” Napoleon said. “But he’s not using them.”

“Yes, he is,” Illya said. “He’s using his fake papers with THRUSH, and in transient relationships. How well did we vet Ekland?”

“Fairly,” Napoleon said, not liking where Illya was going with that. “Thus why he wouldn’t carry real IDs to go cruising.”

“Cruising,” Illya repeated, clearly memorizing the word.

“Yeah,” Napoleon said. “In case the police picked him up.”

“Then he’d be caught with a fake ID,” Illya said. “While cruising.”

Napoleon turned the license over. It didn’t have the feel of any of the forgers he knew, but he’d been in Europe for a long time before he came back to New York. He knew the European forgers who did good work, especially if they also had connections in the art world, but not the ones here yet.

“No,” Napoleon said, slowly, in dawning dismay. He didn’t check the windows of the coffee shop, because he was actually decent at his job, despite what Illya said. “Please tell me I’m not - “

“We picked Ekland because we were already tracking Gardner, and because he was easy to pick up,” Illya said grimly. “Make the call.”

“He’ll be lucky if we get to him before they do,” Napoleon said, then drained his coffee before going outside to the nearest pay phone. He dropped in some change and dialed the New York office’s main desk.

“Hello,” said the smooth voice at the other end. “You’ve reached Uncle Dave’s Pizza, please state your order.”

“I’m not sure what I want,” Napoleon said. “Can you list me the options?”

“That depends on what you like. Are you with guests?”

“No, just family,” Napoleon said. “But I’m away from the house at the moment.”

“I see,” the receptionist said. “And your name?”

“Napoleon Solo,” he said.

“Phone number?”

He listed off a seven-digit number that didn’t match the pay-phone’s number. 

“What department were you looking for?”

“Analysis,” he said. “I think we may have been sent after a red herring.”

“I’ll transfer you with high priority,” the receptionist said.

While they waited, Illya and Napoleon hung onto Gardner’s wallet and went back to Illya’s shabby little studio, where Napoleon slept on the couch. Napoleon had an apartment in New York, an illegal sub-let uptown that was beautifully, if minimally, furnished, and which Napoleon would give up in a heartbeat to go back to Europe.

He’d keep the clothes, though; the job was hard on clothes.

Napoleon made breakfast in just his undershirt and trousers, after the sun came in the kitchen window and hit him in the face by way of greeting long before he wanted to be awake. It wasn’t anything special, just some toast and coffee or tea and a fried egg each. He brought Illya, who was blinking himself disgruntledly awake and still clearly mustering the wherewithal to get out of bed, the plate of food and a mug of tea.

Illya looked at him then, clearly confused, and Napoleon said, “Breakfast.”

“I can see that,” Illya said, brow furrowed and hair mussed, and sat up. He was wearing a pajama shirt in bleak powder blue that didn’t suit him. 

“Don’t get up,” Napoleon said, and set the mug in his hand and the plate on his lap. 

Illya touched the edge of the plate. “Thank you,” he said. “But you could have brought jam.”

The phone rang. It was just after seven. Someone had clearly just gotten to work. Illya shoved the plate onto his nightstand but took the tea with him to the phone, which he picked up.

“Kuryakin,” he said, then, after a pause, listed off a seven-digit number that wasn’t his phone, and was in Russian. Illya didn’t have a second receiver in the apartment, so Napoleon slunk up behind him and tried to listen in. It didn’t work very well; he couldn’t hear more than that the speaker was male, and he kept getting distracted by the closeness, and how Illya smelled good. It was generic human-smell - Illya didn’t go in for scents - but it was pleasant.

Napoleon made himself step away. He’d let himself be drawn into the fiction he and Illya had built the night before because it was so close to his own fantasies. 

He poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down on the couch to eat his toast while Illya finished the call. After hanging up, Illya sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up his plate.

“Gardner is FBI. He was originally assigned to a business they suspected of being a front for money laundering - for gambling income. Instead, it was THRUSH. They only found out recently. Our intelligence source for his role in THRUSH is probably compromised. Ekland is an unknown to them; he may be a genuine attraction.”

“They’re pulling him, right?”

Illya looked at him over the forkful of egg he was about to bite into. “Would you?”

Napoleon had been tantamount to expendable for all his years at the CIA because he was a convicted felon, but one of Sanders’ lackeys had been homosexual and gotten caught at it, and subsequently fired. If Gardner’s handler was kind, he’d probably hope Gardner died in the line of duty in the next 24 hours.

“ _I_ would,” Napoleon said. “But I’m queer, aren’t I.”

“Yes.” Illya frowned down at his plate, his hand still holding a half-eaten slice of toast. “I thought, when I was assigned to you after you took Gaby to West Berlin, that the KGB had found out about me. That they would use me for more and more dangerous missions until it killed me.”

Napoleon’s insides tried to simultaneously catch on fire and freeze. “They were hoping I’d, what, seduce you for fun?”

“Or that you would get me killed. Or I would kill you, which they would have liked.” Illya put the plate down. Napoleon wasn’t offended; Illya had eaten the egg. “And then they could give me to the CIA and I would be gone. No more homosexual elements in that group.”

“But they didn’t know.”

“No. They didn’t know.”

“And you’re still homosexual,” Napoleon added, and Illya snorted. 

“I never was,” he said. “Like you.” 

Napoleon took a sip of his coffee. “That explains why we get along so well,” he said.

“Not entirely,” Illya said. “But a little.”

“We should tell Waverly that if Gardner survives this, he’ll be looking for a job,” Napoleon said.

Illya looked at the floor. “Yes,” he said. “And you’ll have to explain to him that if he touches you like that again, you will hurt him.”

Napoleon had almost forgotten. People touched him like that fairly often - not just men, either. He didn’t like it, but it didn’t bother him anymore. But it was reassuring that Illya had remembered. That it had been more than play-acting at possessiveness.

“I won’t have to,” he said. “He’ll know who I really am.”

“Cowboy,” Illya said, “I don’t think you know who you really are.”

“Touché,” Napoleon said.

 

Gardner’s real name, it turned out, was Andrew Stavrides, and Illya got his address - somewhere in Queens - from Analysis once they got into the office. They took a taxi there, surveilled the block, and went inside the apartment building, where Napoleon picked the lock on the apartment door.

Inside, the rooms were generic bachelor-pad clean. There was no way that he would have taken a liaison here; it was a perfectly middle-class studio apartment, nothing special, and certainly nothing that a man of Gardner’s means would have kept. 

He and Illya searched it efficiently, found nothing, and bugged it, then had a silent battle of wills over who had first shift with the receiver in the small restaurant across the street. Illya won, so Napoleon was left with the extra bugs and a very bulky, very boring radio tuned to them, and watched the street for the ensuing two hours.

Mendoza came to relieve him around lunchtime; they split a souvlaki and a lamb shank with rice and peas, both of which were tasty if not inspired. He left her with the radio, but not the bill, because he was a gentleman. She’d been making noises about going to the pastry shop next door, which was just as well; he thought the owners of the restaurant had been starting to give him suspicious looks.

He arrived back at the office with an order of stuffed grape leaves for Illya, who eyed the paper bag that Napoleon put on his desk with some surprise.

“Lunch, if you haven’t had it,” Napoleon said. “Any joy of Stavrides?”

“No,” Illya said, opening the bag. “The address on his driver’s license is a hotel-apartment in Midtown. They don’t have a record of him staying there as Gardner or under his real name. Tamura called the Hare & Hound to see if she could find last night’s maître d’ and is going to his listed residence now.”

“Men like that are paid not to remember anyone they see, in case the police come sniffing,” Napoleon said, and Illya gave him a look that said very plainly, _I’m aware, thank you_.

“It’s worth trying,” Illya said instead. “Ekland is being re-interviewed now, and Bradley’s overseeing execution of a search warrant on his apartment.”

“Where does he live, anyway?” Napoleon asked.

“Morningside Heights,” Illya said, removing the wax paper wrappings.

“Has he said anything interesting in interview?”

“The same as the first time we talked to him,” Illya said, opening a desk drawer and taking out a fork that he had liberated from the office cafeteria for just this kind of occasion. “Jefferson is reviewing the report that implicated Gardner, since Girard is in Mexico.”

“Has anyone started reviewing Girard?” Napoleon said.

“No,” Illya said. “Not until after Jefferson is done.”

Napoleon hummed and sat on the edge of Illya’s desk, watching him dig into the food. “It sounds like everything’s in hand.”

“Former best agent in the KGB,” Illya said. “Thank you for lunch.”

“You’re welcome,” Napoleon said, and stole one of the pieces. They were good, stuffed with rice and ground pork, seasoned with dashes of lemon and mint - he should have had that instead.

 

“I heard Illya got lunch in return for leaving you in a restaurant doing surveillance for two hours, and I got nothing,” Gaby said, lounging in the doorway to his office. She was wearing calf-length navy pants and a lighter blue top, but there was grease under her fingernails, so she’d been working and wearing coveralls over that outfit.

“I would never,” Napoleon said, and gestured to the bag on the corner of his desk. She peered in, then looked at him in delight.

“Baklava,” she said happily, and picked up the bag. “I’ll forgive you.”

“Thank you,” Napoleon said, with a smile.

“What were you surveilling?”

“The man we thought we were after turned out to be an undercover agent, and his cover was probably blown.”

“And he didn’t show up to work today?”

“He loses tails when we try to follow him to the office,” Napoleon said. 

“And that didn’t tell you he was one of ours?”

“He wasn’t,” Napoleon said, then made a shushing gesture. She wrinkled her nose. 

“Right,” she said. “What did you do?”

Napoleon shrugged. “We met him at a bar that caters to men of a certain persuasion,” he said.

“The kind of persuasion that responds to you and not to me,” Gaby said dryly.

“Well,” Napoleon said. “And we don’t think his real bosses knew. But they do now.”

“So now we’re trying to find him before THRUSH or his real bosses do,” Gaby said. “Because either way his life is ruined.”

“I work here, don’t I?”

“That’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “And you even like it.”

“It’s better than prison.”

“Don’t be glib,” she said. “You like it here.”

“I don’t really like New York,” he said. “It thinks it’s the center of the world but hasn’t met Paris.”

“Please stop,” she said. 

“I was about to compare it to Berlin.”

“You think Berlin is an architectural dystopia,” she said.

“I didn’t say favorably.” 

“Mm,” she said. “What does Illya think?”

“Of New York?”

“Of this agent’s situation.”

 _Illya thought he was being sent to his death when he was told to work with me_ hopped onto Napoleon’s tongue, and he had to swallow it. “You should ask him. He’s just over there.” He indicated the north wall of his office.

“You didn’t have problems with the CIA, though,” she said. 

“Please,” Napoleon said. “I had more problems with the CIA than just the fact that I happen to also like men. My tendency to steal things off well-dressed heiresses, for one.”

“But you were one of the best,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Imagine how good I had to be for them to keep me anyway.” He shrugged, then, casting it off. “I need to write up a report.”

“All right.” She laid a hand on his shoulder, and he let himself lean into it for a moment before pulling away. The thought of Illya dying because of - all his skill and his cleverness and his strength being put to waste by people who thought that being attracted to other men made all of the rest of him useless, that made something under his skin boil. If he’d met Illya ten years ago, he’d have tried to recruit the man for his team on the spot, if Illya wouldn’t have killed him first. 

If he’d met Illya ten years ago, he probably _would_ have tried to seduce him eventually - there were enough tall, dangerous blondes (and blonds) notched into Napoleon’s bedpost to be reasonably certain of it, if you had that kind of mind.

That made it worse, in a way - that Napoleon could be so blatantly predicted. Well, the least he could do was show Illya the courtesy of not letting it slip. 

“Dinner on Friday?” he said.

“As long as they don’t send one of us somewhere else before then,” she said, and left. He heard her knock on Illya’s door, and the low murmur of voices, as he started up his typewriter.

 

Napoleon volunteered to go look through the records at the hotel-apartment on the Gardner driver’s license, since it was on his way home anyway.

He brought the sketch. The clerk looked at it and shrugged. 

“I see a dozen men like that every day,” she said. “Maybe more.”

“This one might’ve had company,” Napoleon said. “Male, and last night, well after eleven.”

She furrowed her brows, mouth twisting. “I don’t work the late-night shift,” she said. “That’s Noah. He won’t be in until ten.”

Napoleon checked his watch. It was six-thirty.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and gave her his UNCLE card. He had two: one with the UNCLE insignia, saying, _Napoleon Solo, investigative officer,_ with his desk phone line. The other said _Napoleon Solo, Independent art and antiquities dealer_ , and had neither phone number nor address on it. It was very old; he didn’t have to reprint them much anymore.

He went and made himself dinner, a nice bit of steak, with beans and potatoes. Quick enough to make, tasty, and something he could finish before nine so that he would be back in time.

Noah was a large man, which explained why he had the night shift.

“I saw someone like that,” he said. “In room six-forty.”

“He had company?” Napoleon asked. 

“Yeah,” Noah said. “A little guy.”

From Noah, who was built like a sumo wrestler, ‘little’ could mean anything.

“Can you describe him more than that?”

Noah shrugged. “I tried not to notice, y’know? Five-seven, maybe. Business suit. White.”

Which described nearly any man of European descent and medium height in the city. “Thanks. Room six-forty, you said?”

“Yeah,” Noah said. 

“You ever see them leave?” Napoleon asked.

“I got off shift at six,” Noah said. “But for what it’s worth, no.”

“Right,” Napoleon said. “Give me the key.”

“Sorry,” Noah said, so Napoleon went out, changed his hair, his tie, and the way he walked, came back in, and went up the elevator unmolested. 

The door had a “Do Not Disturb” sign on it. He picked the lock; it wasn’t very hard.

The inside of the room was a disaster, and there was blood on the bed. He had no idea why nobody in 642 or 638 had complained, because given the signs of struggle, it had to have been reasonably loud.

“Oh, you,” said Stavrides. He was sitting in a chair, with his hand wrapped in a towel, and another pressed to his cheek. “I thought you seemed suspicious.”

Napoleon held up his empty hands. “Napoleon Solo,” he said. “Former CIA, currently of UNCLE. We had bad intel and were tracking you because of it; you’ve almost certainly been compromised at THRUSH.”

“No shit,” Stavrides said. “There’s a dead THRUSH hit man in the bed.”

“And you didn’t leave?”

“I didn’t know where to go,” he said. “You were either CIA or THRUSH, and - your friend, he’s, what, ex-KGB?”

“Something like that,” Napoleon said. “UNCLE now.”

Stavrides sighed. “What now? If THRUSH gets me, I’m dead. If the FBI gets me - they know I’m queer, don’t they.”

“Sorry,” Napoleon said.

“That’s what I thought. So I’m fired if I go to them, which will end in dead. What are you offering?”

“Probably a job,” Napoleon said. “UNCLE doesn’t care about that. Can’t afford to, since THRUSH doesn’t.”

“Mm,” Stavrides said thoughtfully, closing his eyes. “Sorry about the touching,” he said. “I wanted to see what you’d do.”

“I’ve been undercover before,” Napoleon said, which wasn’t forgiveness, and neither of them pretended it was. “Does the phone work?”

“Yeah,” Stavrides said. “If it didn’t get broken in the fight.”

Napoleon went over to it, avoiding the pool of blood, and picked it up. It went to the desk. 

“Dial out, please,” he said to Noah, and called Illya’s home number.

“Kuryakin,” Illya said.

“I’ve found Stavrides,” Napoleon said. “He went to that hotel with a guest who was a THRUSH assassin.”

“Dead?”

“Surprisingly no,” Napoleon said.

Illya paused for a moment, then said. “Can he be moved?”

“Well, the enormity of his situation has occurred to him,” Napoleon said. “He’s been here for about twenty-four hours. But he seems to be in decent health.”

“Minor lacerations and a few ugly bruises,” Stavrides said. “And probably a cracked rib.”

Napoleon repeated that into the receiver. 

“I’m calling headquarters, which is what you should have done,” Illya said.

“I wanted to update the agent in charge,” Napoleon said faux-meekly.

“I am updated but not the agent in charge,” Illya said, then, a little more forgivingly, “Stay there and don’t let anyone kill him.”

“Aye-aye, Peril,” Napoleon said, and hung up.

“Peril,” Stavrides repeated, once the receiver was down. “By the way, that’s not how my name is pronounced.” 

“Oh?” Napoleon said, and sat in one of the chairs that had a good view both of the door and the window of the room.

 

A team arrived to examine the room and clean it up, and a second group arrived to cart Stavrides to headquarters, where he received the basic first aid that he needed, as well as a meal.

Napoleon wasn’t sent to interview him, and neither was Illya. Napoleon went home for the second time that night and slept. He had no idea what Illya did.

When he got back in the morning, Stavrides was still there, though his interview had concluded a few hours earlier. The UNCLE team met at ten to compare notes.

Bradley went first. 

“Ekland’s apartment was clean,” he said. “No sign of THRUSH affiliation. Oware - sorry, he went home to sleep - authorized me to say that the re-statementing agrees with that hypothesis.”

Tamura nodded. “The Hare & Hound bartender confirmed that the THRUSH assassin in the hotel looked like the same man that Gardner-Stavrides left with on Wednesday night,” she said.

“Forensic examination of the man in the bed confirms cause of death as strangulation, aligned with when Stavrides said he and the man fought,” Huang said.

The crime scene examination team had also produced a number of items on the dead man’s person - or, more accurately, in his clothes; he’d been naked - that were fairly revealing of the dead man indeed being THRUSH. 

“More importantly,” Jefferson said. “I re-examined the reports and documents implicating him. They were made using accurate THRUSH transmission codes for the day they were purportedly sent. I’ve sent a team to go pick up our source, quietly, in case the fault isn’t on his end.”

“Thank you,” Bradley told her, then said to the assembled agents, “Stavrides can’t be put back under for his own safety, but according to the interviews, there is a large upcoming THRUSH financial meeting outside Geneva in two weeks. He was scheduled to attend, and had been for six months. Assuming that the decision to send him predated his being exposed as FBI, this meeting is genuine, and the attempted murder occurred now because of that meeting as a deadline.”

“Does anyone else who will be attending know what he looks like?” Napoleon said. Bradley checked the transcript.

“There will be some members of an American delegation who might, but the international groups wouldn’t,” he said finally, then narrowed his eyes. “What are you thinking, Solo?”

“I could pass for Stavrides if you only knew his description,” Napoleon said. He was, in fact, the only one on the team who could - Huang, Tamura, and Jefferson were all women; Oware had skin so dark as to be nearly true black; Bradley was clearly of at least partly African heritage; and Illya, while white, couldn’t pass for American if he tried. 

Jefferson considered that. “I’m listening,” she said. 

“We know where the meeting is happening and approximately what the schedule is. If, at the very least, we infiltrate the facility, any information we pick up is better than no information,” he said. “They don’t know we have Stavrides, so if I try to come in posing as him, unless they’ve been alerted to his being FBI, they’ll think he’s been captured by UNCLE. If they know he’s FBI,” Napoleon shrugged, “I’ll know very quickly. And if no one catches on at all, then I’m under for the whole meeting.”

“That’s idiotic,” Illya said flatly. “Pull one compromised agent and put in another.”

“Send one of us with him,” Bradley said. “THRUSH wouldn’t care. Bodyguard, lover - whichever one they see, they’ll allow. And that’s two agents.”

“If they know Solo’s a spy, they’ll assume his companion is too,” Illya said. “And bodyguards won’t be allowed in their meetings.”

“That’s true,” Bradley admitted.

“He might be able to go bugged to meetings,” Tamura suggested. “Suit coat lining, that kind of thing. The range is about one hundred meters now.”

“And I can bug any rooms I go in. That wouldn’t be out of character for THRUSH divisions, either,” Napoleon added.

Jefferson held up a hand to stop them. “Bradley and Solo, write me a proposal outlining your plans and expectations for Solo going undercover as Gardner. You have access to Stavrides for interviews and confirmation for as long as we’re permitted by law and by his agreement, since he’s cooperating with us. Distribute copies to all other members of this team within 36 hours, and comments returned within 12 hours after that. I’ll consult with Waverly and make the decision then.”

“Thank you,” Napoleon told her, as the meeting adjourned, once the two of them were alone in the room.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, smiling grimly. “You may have saved his life by going to the Hare & Hound, but you’ve complicated everyone else’s.”

“Sorry,” he said. 

“And you managed to get a proposal to send you to Switzerland,” she added. “Liked Europe that much, did you?”

“Yes,” he said. 

“Me too,” she said. “But eventually you have to come home.”

Napoleon had heard rumors that Jefferson had been with the Red Cross or the Nurse Corps during the war; she was old enough for it to be true. Her file was above his clearance, so there was no way to confirm. 

“Did you?” he said.

She laughed, a little bit shockingly. She was a handsome woman, well into her forties, dark-skinned with a long face and hair that she kept short and straightened. 

“No,” she said, in a low drawl entirely unlike the way of speaking that he was used to hearing from her, “I’m not going home ‘til they bury me.”

“I think I should congratulate you,” he said.

“Me too,” she said. “Thirty-six hours, Solo.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and watched her go. 

 

Around hour six of Napoleon and Bradley working on the report, Illya came into Bradley’s office and sat down to listen and, presumably, provide criticism. 

Napoleon was tired - he hadn’t slept well the night before, given the staying-up-until-all-hours looking after Stavrides before coming in to work - and Illya had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves until his forearms were bare. He looked so impressively handsome and so familiar that Napoleon wanted to slide into his space and fall asleep against him. If Illya wanted to wrap an arm around his shoulders and keep him there, that would be nice, too.

God, he was tired. He wiped a hand over his eyes and made himself sit back in his chair. 

“I need to sleep,” he said. “I’m going home. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Good idea,” Bradley said, shoulders easing. “Me too.”

Napoleon and Illya left Bradley’s office, and Illya said, with an edge of reluctance, “My apartment is closer. You could sleep on my couch.”

“If you let me in once, I’ll keep coming back. Like a tomcat,” Napoleon said, managing to give off ruefulness.

“Then no,” Illya said, but he was smiling faintly. “I don’t need dead mice on my pillow.”

“Not your pillow,” Napoleon said. “THRUSH agents don’t fit on pillows.” He tried not to think about the corpse Stavrides had left in the bed, which had filled up the sheets with blood. 

“No,” Illya said, and laid his palm along Napoleon’s elbow for a moment in comfort, because he almost definitely knew what Napoleon was thinking. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You too, Peril,” Napoleon said.

 

“Congratulations,” Jefferson said, slapping the proposal onto Napoleon’s desk, “You’re going to Switzerland. Try not to mess it up in a way that creates any extra paperwork for me.”

“I will,” Napoleon said. 

“Have the travel agent get tickets for you and Kuryakin for the same day as Stavrides would have gone, under the Gardner alias. Teller’s flying out this week to do groundwork and liaise with the local force, and acquire the necessary equipment.”

“Understood,” Napoleon said. “Thanks.”

She didn’t smile at him, but her expression hinted at amusement. “It’s an opportunity to get critical intel on THRUSH. Your report argued that very convincingly.”

“Well done for Bradley, then,” he said.

 

The choice of Illya was inevitable once Stavrides admitted, in interview, a known preference for blonds. So that was that, and Napoleon tried not to imagine increasingly ludicrous scenarios on the flight over: having to have sex in order to convince THRUSH that Illya was genuinely his lover; falling asleep in bed together and waking up to Illya looking at him with soft fondness; Illya somehow deciding to tip him down into the bed and kiss him. 

The hotel where the meeting would occur was out in the countryside, in what was, in the winter, skiing country; they drove there along winding curves of road, listening to popular songs on the radio. Napoleon translated the gist of the Italian-speaking radio announcer’s introductions to the songs, which were in a variety of languages that he and Illya between them almost always spoke.

The lodge where the meeting was happening was clearly intended for winter tourist popularity, and was large enough to accommodate all the guests that THRUSH was likely to expect. Stavrides, as Gardner, had taken a room in the hotel, and Napoleon encountered no issues in checking in as him.

Gardner was supposedly a high-living Midwestern industrial scion who’d come to New York to work in banking, and decided he liked it. Stavrides had worked on the accent, but Napoleon didn’t bother; if anyone was listening that closely and knew Stavrides’s Gardner that well, Napoleon was already in trouble.

Illya was still using the Ian McCallum papers, though after this, they’d probably have to be scrapped. McCallum was a radio and electronics repairman, and if the number on his business card were called, there was even someone on the other end who would vouch for him. It was one of Gaby’s coworkers.

The room was on the small side, but cozy, with well-built wooden furniture in warm colors, clean white sheets on the bed, and a navy-colored duvet. The window looked out on the parking lot to the side of the building, and past that, to part of the town that hosted the lodge. The steep roofs charmed him, and he tucked the curtains back into place gently as Illya finished sweeping his side of the room for bugs. It was, miraculously, unmonitored.

“View of the parking lot,” Napoleon said. “We should keep an eye on that and try to get some photos. It would get Analysis their faces.”

“Mm,” Illya agreed. “If you intend to bring guests back to the room, please signal me first.”

Napoleon tried not to stare at him in disbelief. It didn’t work.

“Peril,” he said slowly, “I think you may have misunderstood your cover here.”

Illya shook his head in denial, once. “Stavrides would have gone with us, despite Ekland. So he is not monogamous.” Illya paused, making a face. “Whatever that means for someone who only likes men.”

“I’m not going to kick you out of the room for sex,” Napoleon said patiently. “Because supposedly if I want it, I can have it with you.”

Illya’s jaw tightened, then relaxed. “Just in case. If you have to,” he said. “So we can stage a fight later.”

“Mm,” Napoleon said. The idea wasn’t a bad one - it would give Gaby a distraction if she needed one - but it made something in him rebel. Probably would feel too much like actually going behind Illya’s back with another lover, which was ridiculous and unsubtle, even for him. “Maybe,” he said. “If it’s necessary.” 

Illya was looking at the headboard of the bed, or at least in its direction, and to make himself stop thinking nebulous things about sitting next to Illya, both their backs to that headboard, Napoleon said, “Besides, a lot of the people here will be women, and I can’t sleep with them without blowing my cover.”

“Yes, you’ve made your point,” Illya said dryly.

 

Gaby came by before dinner that evening with a large supply of standard UNCLE-issue bugs in various sizes and ranges. The short-range ones were small, with pins in them that could be bent slightly to allow for fastening at various angles and locations; the longer-range ones were disguised as transistor radios. She also brought the receiver for them, and she and Illya tuned the frequencies for the bugs over the course of a couple of hours.

“One hundred meters at long range, huh,” Napoleon said, looking at the span of roofs. About a hundred yards. “Let me go bug the restaurant. Illya, you want to come too? Sorry, Gaby.”

“Someone has to stay with the radio,” she said, waving them away. “Go, go.”

The restaurant, when they stepped inside, smelled of roasting meat: not unpromising. The décor was entirely country rustic: light woods, a few stone fireplaces, modest decoration. He and Illya were seated a little off-center at a long trestle table, a comfortable distance from two other diners who were nearer the kitchen. The menu listed mostly traditional fare, promising visitors a comforting, stick-to-your-ribs kind of meal.

Illya opened his menu, skimmed it, and closed it again.

“Decided already?” Napoleon asked.

“Sausage with rösti,” Illya said.

Napoleon hummed appreciatively and kept looking. He liked what he liked, as far as food went, but there was a power dynamic to Gardner: Illya certainly wouldn’t be paying, and he’d be eating - ah, there. And even to Napoleon’s taste. He closed his menu.

“You?” Illya said.

“You’ll find out,” Napoleon said, and smiled at him. Illya held it, then visibly seemed to realize that he was supposed to be Gardner’s lover, and looked down to fiddle with the menu.

Napoleon pushed down a sense of wrongness - Illya didn’t back down from people trying to lean on him like that; he just moved the battlefront - and said, low, fast, and in Russian, “Let me,” and reached out to put his hand over Illya’s on the menu.

Illya’s head shot up. His eyes were wide, mouth open slightly.

“Sorry about the long flight,” Napoleon said. “But you got to drive here, so that’s okay.”

“Yes,” Illya said, and curled his hand into Napoleon’s for a moment before looking around and pulling it away. Napoleon edged his leg against Illya’s and leaned an elbow on the table, smirking. It was a nasty power play, just the kind of thing Gardner would do: possessive, public, and controlling. What had Ekland seen in him?

Their waiter came; Napoleon ordered a local specialty beer for both of them, as well as their dinners. If anyone had noticed the way Napoleon was keeping his ankle pressed to Illya’s, they weren’t making any kind of fuss about it. 

Their long-range bugs had about fifty hours of power. Apparently the labs were still working on making their lifetimes useful, and their bodies smaller. Napoleon didn’t pretend to know anything about it, but Illya liked that kind of thing and tended to be current on the technical details of their electronic equipment, and Napoleon generally left it to him.

The radio-bug was a weight in his jacket pocket. If he left it someplace obvious, someone might try to return it to him. But if it was _too_ obvious, it might get stolen, which would render the whole thing useless. This was going to require some thinking.

Their beers came, and the waiter served Illya first after glancing at Napoleon. Napoleon wasn’t sure what to make of that; he wasn’t normally this unsubtle when out with men. Probably better to tone it down.

He left his calf against Illya’s leg, though. 

 

In the end, he left the radio-bug nestled in a small display of fake greenery in an alcove near the restrooms, which seemed the best compromise between bad options, given the distance involved.

They split dessert, a homemade hazelnut and pear tart that Napoleon wanted the recipe for so he could make it even better than it already was, and Illya didn’t put up a fuss about Napoleon paying the whole bill, probably because it was company money anyway.

Napoleon considered bringing Gaby back something for dinner - she deserved it - but there was no graceful way to do it that wouldn’t invite questions, since she was an outsider both to the town and to THRUSH.

She was, also, eating a room service dinner when they got back, so that was that.

“How did you order that?” Napoleon said. “There aren’t supposed to be any women in the room.”

“Please,” she said scornfully. “I told the hotel staff I was your translator, up from Zurich.”

“But the conference is in English,” Napoleon said. “And you don’t have a Swiss German accent.”

“You’ll be traveling in Switzerland and West Germany afterwards,” she said. “With him.” She gestured to Illya. 

“We didn’t bring enough luggage for that,” Illya said.

“I brought three cases of electronics. They’re convinced.”

“Good grief, you mean there’s more?” Napoleon said.

“I didn’t want you to run out,” she said. 

“Thank you,” Illya said.

 

The bed was comfortably big enough for both of them, and their preferred sides of the mattress were complementary, which helped too. It would have been even more awkward if one of them had had to contend with the edge of the bed on the wrong side of his body and ended up lying awake for hours - Napoleon had been that team member more than once in his time.

He fell asleep quickly and easily, without thinking of the space between his and Illya’s backs at all. 

Registration for the meeting would be taking place all day, with the morning open for general schmoozing, and the opening remarks at two, by a Mr. Theodore Geisler. Gardner had registered for the conference under a pseudonym that was apparently associated with his region. This was the custom at THRUSH conferences, so that no one individual group’s fall to law enforcement should give away the others. Napoleon was uncomfortably reminded of his team, where he’d learned one or two names that he suspected were real, and managed to not give them up to the CIA during questioning only by virtue of having deliberately forgotten them long before.

Napoleon lounged about in bed for a bit, being idly charmed by the way Illya snored lightly, before getting up and going down on his own to the breakfast the hotel was serving. The spread included assorted varieties of bread, some toasted, with butter, margarine, honey, and an assortment of fruit jams; soft-boiled eggs, tomatoes, sausages, and muesli. Napoleon took a share of what looked good and sat down.

It was all acceptable but not inspiring - the muesli was the best part of it, which would’ve been dispiriting if he thought about it, so he didn’t - and afterwards he went to check in for the conference.

There were three women at the tables, all dressed in identically tailored suits, though two of the women were brunettes, if strangely similar-looking. The nearest one caught his eye, so he went to her.

“De Jong,” he said, “Representing New York, New Jersey, et cetera.”

“Welcome to the conference,” she said, flipping through a stack of cards. “Identification, please?”

He handed over the fake driver’s license under the Gardner name that UNCLE had made up for him. She compared it to something on the card, nodded, and handed it back. “You’re here unaccompanied?”

“Not quite,” he said, putting the license back in his wallet. “I have some company that wanted to join me, but he won’t be participating in the conference. Just some sightseeing before and after.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “Make sure your guest stays out of the conference areas for his own safety, please. We take security very seriously and any infraction on his part would go on your record.”

“Understood,” he said, and took the packet of conference materials that she handed him.

 

The room looked to be about thirty by fifty feet, with hardwood floors and whitewashed walls, and a few strategically placed comfortable chairs in little nooks. There were about a dozen people milling around, so Napoleon picked up a nondescript ceramic mug, filled it with coffee from the service thermos on the table, and went to listen in.

The first group were a handful of women, whom he avoided except to pass near enough to hear that they were discussing the challenges of managing male employees. 

Napoleon had read THRUSH’s code of professional conduct, which specified, among other things, that all employees, regardless of sex or race, were to be respected in their competencies. It also had provisions against fraternization of employees, especially involving the use of force or coercion, or conduct that created a sexually oppressive atmosphere. If Napoleon hadn’t been caught before THRUSH was well-established, he might have considered joining - except, of course, he hadn’t had any political ambitions, unlike most of their organization, and he disliked Nazis as a rule, which they weren’t always picky about below the regional management level. Certain chapters within Austria were especially prone to it.

“A bit different from your usual haunt, isn’t it?” asked a woman’s voice, in a lilting accent from behind him, and he turned. “Or have you diversified?”

Marta Olofsson - almost definitely a _nom d’art_ \- was a tall, heavyset blonde fence from Napoleon’s prior life as a thief. She had no taste for artistic types; last he’d heard, in the late Fifties, she was married to a Frenchman who was some kind of professor, maybe of history, somewhere. She also spoke six languages fluently, never forgot a face or a work of art, and could distinguish ninety percent of forged Egyptian gewgaws within thirty seconds. She specialized in Roman and Egyptian art, but was a good woman to know in pinches involving pre-Columbian New World jewelry, too.

None of that explained what she was doing there.

“Did you?” he asked. 

“Mm.” She leaned forward and bussed his cheek, a gesture that he returned. “What are you calling yourself these days?”

Good, so he hadn’t been made, quite, or at least not yet. 

“Michael Gardner,” he said, and winked. “You?”

“Marta, still,” she said, smiling. “You didn’t answer my question.” 

“Well,” he said, “how much have you heard about me since we last met?”

“That you got arrested,” she said. “And there were rumors that the CIA tried to recruit you, which if true would explain why you’re not doing thirty-to-life somewhere.”

“They did,” he said. “And then I met this delightful little accident in Rome and came to a sticky, well-deserved end.”

“Well done, you,” she said admiringly. “And now you’re here.”

“And now I’m here,” he agreed. “Couldn’t go back to the old game while being dead.”

“Mm,” she said. “I’ve missed you; we should have lunch together today and catch up.”

“I’m traveling with someone,” he said.

“Oh?” Her eyebrows went up. “Traveling, or _traveling with_?”

“Yes, like that,” he said. “Very serious, but not an art man.”

“ _Serious,_ ” she repeated, lips wrapping around the word. “Michael, I would never have believed it.”

“You’ll see it when you meet him,” he said. “If you want.”

“Oh, I want,” she said, and took a sip of her drink - tea, he thought. “I think I see someone I need to talk to. I’ll find you later.”

“Lunch,” he promised, and let her go. Damn. Marta knew him, knew his skills and preferences - he’d met her at the beginning, when he hadn’t yet quite learned how to be careful; she knew him down to the bones, for all that their relationship had only ever been professional. He wouldn’t have taken her for the type to join THRUSH, but then, he hadn’t seen her for - a decade, nearly. People could change a great deal in that much time. Maybe they’d offered her something she wanted badly enough.

He milled around a little longer, introducing himself to people who seemed to be standing at loose ends, and listening in on conversations. He was careful about slipping the short-range bugs into people’s coats and bags, and got about ten people that way, before he told a young man with enthusiastic plans for using retired bills to finance cross-border money laundering that he needed to go check on some paperwork in his room, and extricated himself.

Illya was in the room, listening to the bugs, when he got back.

“Pack it up,” Napoleon said. “We’re going to have company.”

“What?” Illya said, starting to put away the receiver and the other equipment.

“There’s a woman here who knows me from before,” he said, checking all the obvious places for a bug on his person. “She goes by Marta Olofsson but I’m sure that’s not her real name, though she might really be Scandinavian. She fenced Egyptian and Roman art for me, along with a couple of pieces of - well, let’s not go there; it’s old news. But she’s here and she knows me - she’ll probably call me Michael while we’re here, but she knows my real name. I told her that I was here with a lover and that we were serious, but that’s all.”

“So we have to balance the way you treat your real lovers, with the way the Michael Gardner identity does,” Illya said dryly. “Why do trips with you always end up like this.”

“Because the CIA’s best took years to catch me at it, and that was only because they got a lucky break,” Napoleon said, putting his cufflinks back in. “We’re having lunch, the three of us.”

“Of course we are,” Illya said, latching and locking the suitcase and stowing it next to the others.

“Come down to the lobby,” Napoleon said. “Maybe we can keep her - “ there was a knock on the door.

Napoleon opened it a crack. It was, of course, Marta.

“Hello again,” she said as he opened the door wider. “I saw you slip out and thought that was a sign, if ever there was one, that it was time for lunch.” She extended a hand towards Illya. “Marta Olofsson.”

“Ian McCallum,” Illya said, coming over to shake it.

“Really,” she said. “Dublin by way of Leningrad?”

“Something like that,” he said. “I hear you knew Michael in the old days.”

“Yes,” she said.

“He doesn’t tell me much about them,” Illya said. “You’ll have to tell me more.”

“Gladly,” she said, and presented her arm for Illya to take as the three of them went out of the hotel, to a smaller restaurant a block away.

This one was just five tables, with some mismatched chairs, and a husband and wife couple running the kitchen and doing the serving now that it was the off-season. The menu was written on a chalkboard at the front of the room, at a counter, and had only five items on it today, but Napoleon was reserving judgement. He ordered the cured meats selection, with rösti and a small salad, and they took their glasses of water to a table in the corner.

“I met Napoleon,” Marta paused, noticed that Illya didn’t react at the name, and continued, “in ‘52, when he was just a baby and fresh out of the Army.”

Napoleon winced, a little more theatrically than he might have otherwise. 

“There was this little faience figurine,” she said, “a lovely cobalt, five centimeters tall, absolutely beautiful, that he’d gotten from, what, some private collector’s things?”

“A dead Nazi,” Napoleon said. 

“A dead Nazi,” she agreed. “And he didn’t know what to do with it, so he went to a friend who introduced us. And that was that.”

“Where is it now?” Illya asked, and she put a finger over her nose. 

“I never tell,” she said. “But it fetched a fortune, I’ll tell you that. Never seen another like it.”

“I wish I could’ve seen it,” Illya said.

“Mm,” she said. “Maybe someday, in a museum, when the buyer dies. So how did you two happen?”

“Well,” Napoleon said, “remember that well-deserved end in Rome?”

“No,” she said, in obvious delight. “You’re Napoleon's accident?”

“Fortunately for both of us,” Illya said, not without amusement. “I had a small hand in his escape from the CIA.”

“Good boy,” she said to Illya. 

“What about you?” Napoleon said.

“This and that,” she said. “I’m under consideration for a position at an auction house in Paris.”

“That should be interesting,” Napoleon said. “Legitimate or fraud?”

“Legitimate,” she said. “I’m getting too old to stay ahead of the police. Besides, Bernard and I are thinking of adopting, and it’s no good having children if you can’t be there for them.”

“In that case, best of luck,” Napoleon said. He couldn’t, personally, see her as a mother, but his opinion wasn’t the relevant one there, and if it was what she wanted, she should have it.

“But if you’re going to go straight,” Illya said, “what are you doing here?”

“Last hurrah,” she said. “These folks keep asking me to come help them put things on the market. I’ve told them my specialty isn’t whatever they’re selling, but they’ve insisted, so here I am.”

That was a relief, if it was true. He cared for her, despite the long time since they’d talked; she’d been kind to him, and helped show him the business. Having to put her in the same category as all the mad scientists and megalomaniacs THRUSH seemed to attract would’ve been saddening.

“All-expenses paid trip to Switzerland?” Napoleon said.

“Exactly,” she agreed, just as their food arrived, carried on humble ceramic plates and smelling very good. “What about you, Ian?”

“Me?” Illya said. “Electronics repair in the Bronx. Not very glamorous.”

“Really,” she said. “That’s how you get into a sticky situation in Rome?”

“I wasn’t doing it then,” he said, picking up his fork and digging into the food.

“There was a fracas involving some - well, let’s just say it’s best to leave that one classified, since I’m supposed to be dead,” Napoleon said. The Vinciguerra affair was, in fact, at a low level of classification: the nature of the weapons they’d possessed had been unknown, given that both of the weapons had detonated, the scientists who created them were dead, and all the documents had supposedly gone to the bottom of the sea with Victoria Vinciguerra. “At any rate, the CIA and several other groups, including this one, were interested in it.”

“And I ran into Ian in the middle of a Rome street, while he was searching for a lost watch,” Napoleon said.

“My father’s watch,” Illya said. “Very reliable.”

“We found it together, and that was that,” Napoleon said. “Along with some strategic accidents and a night spent crowded together on a scooter across twenty miles of Italian countryside.”

“And some whiskey,” Illya said.

“And a great deal of whiskey,” Napoleon allowed, and leaned into him slightly, exhilarated by Illya’s playing along, by the story they were spinning together.

“Very romantic,” Marta said. “Was that the Dublin stage of things, or the Leningrad one?”

“Roman,” Illya said. “You don’t really think I still have my father’s watch, do you?”

“I suppose not,” she said slowly, beginning to smile. 

Napoleon started eating. The mission might actually be salvageable.

 

They finished lunch and went back to the conference in time for the opening address, which was terminally boring, but Napoleon took notes for Analysis, along with wearing a bug that he and Illya had confirmed was working in the hotel room before Napoleon went down to listen.

Napoleon had had a team member who was good with numbers, to do the financials, when he was thieving professionally. It wasn’t that he was bad with money, just that he didn’t like it, and Nicolas had liked it. So Napoleon was able to follow the lecture, more or less, and thought that once Analysis got wind of it they were going to be very excited.

The group then broke for individual talks and panels. Gardner hadn’t been registered to present, being relatively new in his position and Stavrides not having particularly wanted to generate any novel money-making ideas for THRUSH, and that was working out well for them now.

Napoleon sat in on a panel about narcotics that was very enlightening, one about robots that he hoped Illya enjoyed because he certainly didn’t, and one involving art as a venue for money laundering, which was terribly interesting but not, yet, useful.

Back at the room before dinner - which would be provided by the hotel for most attendees, though he and Illya were going out, since Stavrides-as-Gardner had only registered for one for the dinner - he said to Illya, “What do you think?”

“About what?” Illya said.

“Marta. The talks you heard. The bugs themselves. The food. I’m not picky,” Napoleon said.

“How much do you trust her?” Illya said.

Napoleon laughed, which he thought answered that question. “How much does she know about me? Enough that she knows you’d be my type and isn’t suspicious about that.” Just saying it made him feel weightless and daring, as he watched Illya pack up the bugs’ receiver.

There was a long pause, and then Illya said, “Enough to believe that you’d do this?”

“We haven’t seen each other for ten years,” Napoleon said. “We have no idea what the other would do anymore. At the time we knew each other - no, she knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t do this. I don’t work with Nazis.”

“But you think she might?” Illya watched him from where he stood at the foot of the bed, the suitcase holding the bugs’ receiver ready to hand.

“I don’t - no, I do know.” He waited to let the memory come to him. It was old, and vague. “Keep in mind I don’t know if this is the truth or if it was just part of her identity in the art world. But we were having drinks after she sold something I took off a former SS officer who was living it up in Austria under a false name, and she said - how did she put it? - _they were vermin and they deserve to be hunted down wherever they’re left_.”

Illya let out a breath through his nose. “A woman who works with an organization happy to accept them doesn’t say that.”

“Right,” Napoleon said. “But, you know, for a free all-expenses-paid trip to Switzerland, forgetting your morals for a few days might be worth it. I certainly don’t miss mine.”

Illya turned to look at him, very strangely. “Cowboy,” he said. “You have morals.”

“Well, yes,” Napoleon said. “But they’re inconvenient.”

“I’m aware,” Illya said, dry as dust.

 

Gaby met them for dinner and for recorded tape hand-over at a French restaurant the next town over, where there was less likelihood of them being spotted together - which would have been suspicious, despite the ready excuse they had of her being Gardner’s translator.

“Anything?” she asked, as they sat down.

“Napoleon has a friend from his old days at the conference,” Illya said. 

“Shit,” Gaby said. “How fast do you need to get out?”

“Not those old days,” Napoleon said. “The felonious ones. I think we’ve managed to put her off.”

“What does she look like?” Gaby said. 

“Zaftig, blonde, about five-eight - that’s, what, a hundred and sixty metric? -”

“One hundred seventy,” Illya said. 

“Blue eyes, good dress sense, tends to wear Egyptian jewelry.”

“Good,” Gaby said. “That way I know who to look out for.”

“Exactly,” Illya said. 

Napoleon spent another five minutes explaining what Marta had given as her reasons for being there, at which point their drinks arrived. Napoleon had decided to have wine, because the alternative was to suffer the rest of the evening in total sobriety. He’d suggested buying a bottle between the three of them and just finishing the thing, but Illya had declined and Gaby didn’t like white wine, so that was that.

The wine was mediocre but the food was enjoyable; he was glad that Gaby had wrangled the recommendation out of her hotel’s staff. The fish was tender and only seasoned enough to accent its intrinsic flavor, and was served with peas, which he normally didn’t enjoy overmuch but did now, and some seasoned eggplant, the flavor of which was pleasantly surprising: a little piquant, with some kind of mushroom base.

They split two desserts between the three of them: a yeast dough stuffed with a hazelnut and sugar mixture reminiscent of marzipan and baked; and a light, buttery pastry of similar flakiness and quality to a croissant, though shaped like a loaf, and served with whipped cream.

The general consensus was that the hazelnut was better, but by a slim margin. Gaby tried to be stealthy about using a finger to swipe up the crumbs left on the plate of the pastry, but didn’t quite succeed.

“I need the recipe for that hazelnut thing,” Napoleon mused. 

“Mm,” Illya said, in what Napoleon chose to take as agreement, because Napoleon was known to bring dessert experiments in to work to share. 

“Though possibly with chestnuts,” Napoleon continued thoughtfully, because he liked chestnuts, and because it always got interesting reactions out of Gaby.

“Ugh,” she said in disgust, making a moue. “You’ll ruin the whole dinner we just had.”

“Sorry,” he said, unrepentant.

 

Napoleon drove back to the hotel and he and Illya listened in on the bugs for a while, while the recording equipment wrote tapes of what the bugs picked up, on their behalf. It contained a great deal of gossip about THRUSH business and personnel matters, which would be useful for Analysis; and one interesting-sounding conversation between two of the female managers he’d seen in the group trading tips, and into whose purses he’d slipped bugs, who seemed to be discussing how the sexual encounter they were about to embark upon would go. He changed the receiver’s frequency quickly: the recording might prove valuable from an intelligence standpoint, but he didn’t need to become aroused around Illya.

Napoleon stayed up for a bit after they turned the receivers off, planning which of the talks he’d go to the next day, and then went to bed. It was a little cool in the room, but the sheets warmed up quickly. 

 

He encountered Marta again at the conference breakfast the following morning, where she kissed his cheek briefly in acknowledgement and went back to nursing her coffee.

He left her to it and went to have a conversation with one of the presenters he’d listened to the previous day and who had seemed to have more ingenuity than sense, which turned out to be true, because he - inadvertently or no - gave the front name and location of the THRUSH chapter he worked with.

Napoleon liked stupid but ingenious - it made his job easier, and they were easier to distract.

The first session of the day was in a small room, and only ten people came; the chairs were arranged in a small circle, rather than a presenter’s lectern and audience seating. Napoleon had a bad feeling about it, but stayed, because anything this intimate would be a gold mine for Analysis, and the session had been listed in the conference’s schedule.

Two of the attendees he recognized from a presentation he’d been to the previous day, but Marta wasn’t there, to his relief.

Once they’d all sat down, a woman of a certain age who was wearing a very well-tailored skirt and jacket in burgundy tweed, began, “Thank you for coming. This is an experimental session, designed to help facilitate exchange of ideas between chapters. Since there are some unfamiliar faces here, I would like to hear everyone’s introductions. I have the position of Marguerite Desrosiers, representing Mediterranean France. This is my fifth time at this conference.” 

She looked to her right, to a tall, heavyset man in a charming red tie and double-breasted suit, who said, “Yang Jing, southern China.”

Napoleon was sixth to introduce himself: “Michael de Jong, United States Northeast.”

 

The woman going by Desrosiers for purposes of this conference opened the discussion with, “Mr. Yang, what is one problem your chapter struggles with that you feel isn’t usually discussed?”

Yang leaned forward slightly, mouth pursed in reluctance, then said, “We have difficulty with recruitment across national borders when there are skills we cannot find domestically.” He spoke, now that Napoleon had a better sample of his voice, with a careful, slow deliberation, and a variation on a British accent - English-language training in Hong Kong, was Napoleon’s best guess, but he didn’t have a good ear for accents in English from outside of Europe and North America.

“Why do you think that is?” That was supposedly-Martinez, who represented some of the Caribbean nations’ chapters. Napoleon knew of him by several other aliases, but had never tangled with him directly. 

“Most people do not want to come to a Communist country,” Yang said dryly. 

“What about Soviets? They’re nearby, and Communists. Or Cuba.” That was a woman Napoleon didn’t recognize, representing part of South Africa.

“Language barrier,” Yang said. “We tried.”

The conversation continued in that vein for some time, the various participants trading ideas on how to handle their more recalcitrant problems. Napoleon, following the example of the others, didn’t take notes.

Not contributing at all, however, was abnormal, considering the environment. It was also out of character for Gardner, who would have made suggestions but never asked for assistance. It wouldn’t be ideal to give THRUSH any really good ideas, but if he could suggest something that UNCLE was already tracking…

“Art,” he said, when one of the others mentioned difficulty with laundering money in countries with capital controls. “It was at an earlier session. Art’s value is hard to track and almost entirely subjective. It doesn’t need to contain anything real. There’s a participant here, Marta Olofsson, who specializes in fencing. Talk to her about it.”

There was a moment of thought, then, “Thank you, Mr. de Jong,” said the representative, whose background was in law rather than finance.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

That suggestion brought more attention from the other attendees, some of whom even made efforts to ask his opinion and insight into problems. It was probably kindly meant, but put him on edge nonetheless, and when it ended near noon, he was kept in conversation out in the hall by the disarmingly attractive and dangerously clever Ms. Ahmadi for nearly half an hour, at which point he felt a hand settle on his back and Illya leaned against his side.

“Michael?” Illya said.

“Hello, you,” Napoleon said, and then, to Ahmadi, “I’m sorry, I must have lost track of time - I have a lunch appointment.”

“So I see,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll talk more later.”

“I’d be glad to,” he said, guiding Illya away.

 

Lunch went smoothly, but when they came back to the hotel room, Illya opened the door, stepped inside, looked at Napoleon, and then, carefully, as Napoleon closed the door, stepped into his space, leaning over him so that Napoleon was pressed into the door.

Somewhere, Napoleon’s stomach had gone cold with shock. Illya wanted - Illya hadn’t said - 

“The room has been searched,” Illya murmured into Napoleon’s ear, and oh, that made sense. They were posing as lovers, after all.

“I don’t have another session for an hour,” Napoleon said, at a normal volume. “Do you want me to stay?”

Illya took half a step back. “Yes,” he said.

Napoleon swallowed. The door was hard against his back. He didn’t like being manhandled, as a rule; but with Illya, if Illya asked, knowing that Illya would let him go at a word - 

Illya looked at him strangely. “Please,” Illya said. His voice didn’t match his face or his body language; he was going straight to the desk to get his suitcase, where the handheld radio that was actually a bug detector was, but his voice sounded low, and longing.

“Ian,” Napoleon said, and drove an elbow into the door to make it thud. “Look at me.”

Illya unlatched his suitcase almost silently. 

“That’s more like it,” Napoleon said. He let the silence stand for a moment - bugs didn’t pick up kissing unless it was very noisy, though they did catch fabric shifting if they were placed close enough - before he knocked a hand against the door again, more gently, like Ian had been nudged back up against it.

Illya stood up with the bug-catcher in his hand and went to the suitcases to check them. 

“You shouldn’t come into the conference areas, though,” Napoleon said, pitching his voice to make it sound like a fond rebuke. “It’s not safe.” 

Illya opened the desk’s stomach drawer, held up a small piece of circuitry, then put it on the table.

“I’m not mad,” Napoleon said. “You can talk to me.”

Illya looked over at him, then took a few steps closer, so the distance of their voices from the bug would match. “You were late,” he said.

“I told you I’d come up when it was done,” Napoleon said. He made himself look away from the line of Illya’s neck.

“I don’t like you going there when it’s not safe,” Illya said. He knelt to check the bedframe.

“It’s safe for me.” Napoleon moved over to the bed and sat on the mattress, which creaked. “Yeah, take it off.” He bounced on the mattress again, but it didn’t creak this time.

“This too?” Illya stood, for which Napoleon was relieved. Making an erotic radio show with Illya was bad enough.

“Yeah,” Napoleon said. He made the bed creak again, and then sighed loudly. “Good.”

Illya went to the curtains, where he picked up another bug and set it on the table with the other before returning to near the bed.

“I should clean up,” he said. Napoleon was suddenly and intensely grateful that Illya was looking at the display for the bug-catcher, not at him.

“Yeah, you do that,” he said. Illya went into the bathroom, but came out without a bug after turning on the shower. He closed the bathroom door behind him and finished checking the room in silence.

There were only the two bugs. Napoleon went over to them. They couldn’t just destroy them - that would give the game away. One originally in the curtains, and one inside the desk’s stomach drawer. He picked up the paperweight on the desk and used it to smash the one that had been in the desk.

Illya opened the door to the bathroom. “What was that?”

“I saw a spider,” Napoleon said. “Don’t worry about it.” There. That would seem natural. He gave their listeners another couple of minutes to imagine him searching for and finding it, then smashed the other.

Illya looked grim. Napoleon felt about the same. They weren’t going to be able to leave the room for long stretches of time anymore, if people were poking around. They might also have to sneak Gaby in, just to keep the public cover while not leaving the room unattended. It wouldn’t be entirely unheard-of for someone in a position like Gardner’s to bring a bodyguard on reserve, though it wasn’t supposed to be necessary at events like these.

Napoleon still wasn’t sure if he wanted to say anything - there was such a thing as overconfidence, even with the bug-catcher. 

Illya went into the bathroom and shut the water off, then came back out. 

“Ian,” Napoleon said.

Illya hummed and sat down on the bed, which creaked. Napoleon took his coat and tie off; he didn’t want them getting too rumpled.

“What are you thinking?” Napoleon asked.

“I don’t like spiders,” Illya said. “I don’t want to anymore.”

“I killed them,” Napoleon said. 

“I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“All right.” Stavrides-as-Gardner would have tried to talk him back into it, if Napoleon read the role rightly, but he couldn’t do it, even as play-acting. If someone didn’t want to, they didn’t want to. He didn’t feel like trying to push Illya about it, either.

“I think I’ll take a nap instead,” Illya said, and actually lay down.

“I’ll go look for more spiders, then,” Napoleon said, and did that. He didn’t find any others, though he left the electronics to Illya, and the window curtains had been closed the whole time.

 

He went out to a public telephone on the other end of town after the afternoon sessions and called Gaby.

“Ian and I are being watched,” he told her. “I found bugs in the room when we got back from lunch. I destroyed them, but the room can’t go unoccupied or unprotected now.”

She swore in German. “We should have made you leave the minute your ex-colleague saw you.”

“We can’t know that. It could’ve been - I was at a small panel where they were brainstorming ideas. I gave them one about art, since I went to a panel that was discussing it yesterday. But that might have been it. Ian had to come down and get me.”

She swore again. “Did anything incriminating happen?”

“Well, we were about to have sex, but I told him the bugs were spiders, and then he didn’t want to.”

There was a long silence, and she said. “I didn’t need to know that.”

“Ian doesn’t like spiders,” Napoleon said, shrugging, repeating Illya’s cover name just in case she hadn’t realized the sex was part of the cover. Gaby didn’t think they really were having sex, did she? She didn’t even know Illya was attracted to men at all. 

“I didn’t need to know that,” she sighed, and said, “I’ll come and watch the room for you, but I expect room service for meals, thank you and goodbye.”

“Yes, all right,” he said, but she’d already hung up. He went back to the room with dinner, wrapped up for him by the restaurant they’d gone to on the first day. He got Illya the same thing as Illya had had before.

Back in the room, Illya was examining the settings and innards of their receivers. 

“I’m checking the equipment that’s left,” Illya said by way of greeting. “They’re almost certainly going to try to bug us again.”

“Gaby’s coming in,” Napoleon said, putting the food on the desk, where the broken pieces of bug had been cleared away. “Do you want out? We have plenty of information.”

“I want to know what Olofsson is doing here,” Illya said, setting the equipment to the side. “And Gardner was working for THRUSH for years. He’d have learned to accept this.”

“What are you thinking?”

“It’s only two more days,” Illya said, taking his meal and sitting on the bed with it. “Finish the job. We’re not compromised; they’re just fishing.”

“That’s the spirit,” Napoleon said.

 

It was worse lying next to him in bed. Napoleon didn’t know what Illya sounded like in the throes of desire, but the play-acting had made his libido think he did, and his thoughts kept returning to the moment where Illya had leaned over him, mouth close to his ear, but not touching. 

He was glad Illya hadn’t touched him. But in a different context, not for show - yes. Yes, Illya’s forearm braced against the door, his hand on Napoleon’s shoulder, his voice low as he asked Napoleon for what he wanted. Yes, the both of them pressed together. 

He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, struck by how vividly he could imagine the weight of Illya’s cock there, and rolled over again. 

The honorable ones were always looking deeper; they never stopped at the skin. Illya probably wouldn’t even stop until he knew Napoleon down to the soul, not that Illya believed in them. Down to his bones, then. And Napoleon was who he was; there was no changing that. Beauty was - how did it go? Seen not with the eyes but with the mind. Illya had made it clear enough that he didn’t always like what he saw of Napoleon, let alone find it attractive. 

And that was enough of that. He rolled onto his back and listened to Illya’s breathing. It sounded like Illya might still have been awake, and Napoleon was sorry for it; he wasn’t the most restful roommate. 

Just the two days. The full day tomorrow, and the half-day after that, and then they’d go home.

 

Gaby arrived in the morning while Napoleon was having breakfast, before the sessions started; they managed to sneak her up to the room, where Illya was still in his pajamas, and fiddling with some electronics on the bed.

“Let me see that,” she said, nudging him out of the way and sitting down in front of the receiver. “Speaking of which, you have more presents for me?”

“Desk,” Illya said. 

“Good,” she said, putting the bag next to her purse at the foot of the bed.

“I’ll just go, then,” Napoleon said, gesturing to the door.

“Yes,” Illya said. “Make good recordings.”

But when he got back for lunch, the receiver was sitting in pieces across the bed and the desk, Gaby’s outfit and hair were in disarray, a set of tools was in order on the floor, and Illya had changed out of his pajamas into his trousers and undershirt. His feet were bare and his face was flushed.

“Did I interrupt something?” Napoleon asked, once the door was closed.

“Receiver isn’t working,” Gaby said, moving some wires. The speaker did nothing, and she swore in German.

“Why?”

“If we knew why, we would have repaired it.” She fixed him with a glare of frustration, then set the tool in her hand down on the carpet with the others. “I’m going to lunch. Illya, I’m going to debrief Napoleon for a bit. You can keep working if you want.”

“Understood,” Illya said, taking her place at the desk. 

Gaby took a minute to fix her hair, then put on her coat and left the hotel with him. Napoleon wanted to take the car to the next town over, but Gaby steered him to a restaurant a short walk away, this one also recommended by her hotel’s concierge.

Once they’d ordered their meals, Gaby looked him in the eye and said, “About yesterday.”

“What about yesterday?” he asked.

“Having to fake a relationship with Illya.”

“Good grief,” Napoleon said. “You realize I’ve been caught on tape having actual relationships with men before, yes?”

“But they weren’t coworkers.” Her expression was implacable, and she was still looking at him.

“It’s fine,” he said, then, realizing she might read that as _He nearly punched me and our working relationship is all but ruined_ , added, “Hold that thought.”

She waited. 

He couldn’t tell her _Illya doesn’t mind playing queer because he already is_. But how to reassure her without it?

“If he had a problem with me on that front,” he said, “it would’ve come up a long time ago. I’ve never been subtle, and it’s right there in my file.”

“I’m aware,” she said, maybe a little dryly.

“Besides,” he added, “nothing happened. Just some bouncing on the mattress and some suggestive talking.”

“That’s true,” she said. He eyed her.

“What?”

“I’m checking to make sure things are still okay, not writing a personnel report.”

He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. “I’m happy working with him,” he said. “Illya is tremendously competent, devastatingly supportive in the field, and the best partner I could have imagined - and I’m comparing him to the team I had before, not Sanders’ lackeys. I’m keeping him as long as he’ll have me, and I don’t think a little innuendo is enough to make him go, considering what I’m like the rest of the time.” He crooked a smile at her. “Was that clear enough?”

“Very,” she said.

He thought of adding, _Besides, he started it,_ but that seemed a little too close to giving Illya away, and anyway, their lunches had arrived.

 

When they got back, Illya was closing up the receiver and putting away Gaby’s tools. He was still in his undershirt, but had put socks on.

“Fixed it,” he said. “Overloaded transistor.”

“Thank you,” Gaby said, heartfelt, and sat down in front of the receiver, running her hands over the controls.

“It’s almost two,” Illya said, gesturing at the clock on the nightstand. “You have a session.”

“Yes,” Napoleon said, gathering his conference bag. He flashed the room in general a smile on his way out. 

He was about to walk in the door when Marta caught his arm.

“Good, you’re here,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“What?” he said, as she guided him away towards a side corridor.

“You’re bugged,” she said.

“I know. I found two in my room yesterday.”

“Good. Solo, listen to me. You need to leave, now.”

“Why?”

She looked at him, deadly serious. “You forget that I know you’d never work with Nazis,” she said. “And you know I wouldn’t either. Let’s not lie to each other, yes?”

“I don’t - “

“Solo,” she said. “Your lover is KGB. Please tell me you knew that.”

“ _Was_ KGB,” he said. “I think we need to go talk somewhere else.”

“There’s an enforcement squad coming to capture him. And you, in case you’re complicit,” she said. “Don’t ask how I know. Just get out. And if you’re wearing a wire, he knows too, yes?”

“I don’t -”

“Solo,” she said. “Have you been tortured before?”

“Yes,” he said, and that made her eyes narrow. 

“Then leave. Martinez made you yesterday when you mentioned art. He thinks you’re still CIA, and they’re not going to stop until you admit it. Or until Ian does.”

“How the hell did - “ he started, and then gave up. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

“I survived the war,” she said. “This won’t kill me.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek, then walked away.

He went back to the room, where Gaby was already gone, and the suitcases of electronics with her, and Illya was carrying the suitcases of clothes.

“You heard,” Napoleon said, redundantly.

“Yes. And the report came through from Analysis corroborating. Later,” Illya said.

They made it to the car without incident, but as they were pulling out of the parking lot, a group of men exited the hotel and piled into a car that had been unobtrusively idling nearby.

“Damn,” Napoleon said. “Do they know about Gaby?”

“If they do, they didn’t follow her out,” Illya said.

“Good. Let’s distract them.” Napoleon was driving, and he was glad that he had studied several driving routes in the area; it was going to come in handy, and help keep him from being boxed in. The receivers and bugs getting out with her was good - they didn’t need THRUSH getting their hands on equipment that would let them know about UNCLE’s technological capabilities - but he and Illya were still valuable sources of intelligence. 

“Are you armed?” he asked Illya.

“Yes,” Illya said shortly. The car was a loan from UNCLE Zurich, so it had a few modifications, but nothing flashy. 

“Good,” Napoleon said. 

“Don’t make any sudden stops,” Illya said, turning around in his seat just as someone shot out the back window of the car. 

Illya went very still, braced against the seat back.

“Swerve ahead,” Napoleon said. Illya grunted in acknowledgement, and Napoleon took the turn. As they finished the bend and went back into a straightaway, Illya fired. There was the sound of an impact, but the car behind them didn’t stop.

There was a car ahead on the road, in the other lane. “Sit,” Napoleon snapped, and Illya dropped down. Napoleon pulled back into his lane, so that they would pass the oncoming innocent car, albeit at high speeds. 

They passed. Illya sat back up again. 

“One down,” he said, sounding satisfied. “Two left.”

“Missed the driver?” Napoleon said, trying for light. There was a pull-away for trucks in distress or cars that needed repairs, so that they wouldn’t interfere with traffic. “Hold on.” 

“I was aiming for one with a gun,” Illya said, holding onto the door as Napoleon pulled to the side and braked on short notice. The car behind them rushed past, brakes squealing, as Napoleon pulled back out into the road, making to turn around. Illya shot as they passed the car.

“Missed,” Illya said. 

“Bad luck,” Napoleon said, and accelerated. This time, they went into the lane of oncoming traffic to pass the innocent car. 

It took another two miles before Illya had another clear shot, during which time their car had received several bullets in various locations, but this time, their pursuers went off the road into a nearby field. 

No one pulled out of the field to follow them, so Napoleon slowed down, and began a circuitous route towards the nearest city.

“We’re going to have to apologize about the car,” he said.

“Yes,” Illya said, sitting back down in the seat and putting his gun away. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Napoleon said, rolling his shoulders. “You said you got corroboration from Analysis.”

“Marta Olofsson is a known alias of a former Danish Resistance member codenamed Cleopatra,” Illya said. “Since 1952 she’s been an informant for MI6 tasked especially with looking for art looted by Nazis.”

“Jesus Christ,” Napoleon said. “No wonder she wouldn’t tell me who bought that figurine. It’s probably in the bowels of the British Museum.”

“Gaby didn’t ask,” Illya said.

“I’m going to send her a gift basket,” Napoleon said.

“Olofsson, or Gaby?”

“Marta. Not that Gaby doesn’t deserve one.”

“If you can find her.”

“I’ll find her.” 

They found a pay phone in the next town and called UNCLE Zurich, letting them know about the situation, and were called in for debriefing. It took three days, during which time they found out that Gaby had made it there safely, passed on the last tapes, and returned the equipment before flying immediately back to New York for her own debriefing. 

Martinez, along with many of the other THRUSH officials, had been picked up and detained; the third member of the pursuit squad in the car had talked, and his testimony implicated Martinez for attempted murder. The others were being charged with financial crimes. It would be a major blow to many chapters of THRUSH, though not debilitating.

Based on the strength of his cooperation and the information he had provided, as well as the previous reports from the FBI of Stavrides’ performance in the field, Jefferson had recommended UNCLE hire him. Napoleon hoped he was assigned somewhere on the West Coast so that they didn’t have to work together. 

The flight home was an exercise in paranoia - they’d had to scrap Illya’s papers as Ian McCallum and Napoleon’s as Gardner, of course, and UNCLE Zurich hadn’t had the time to make up a really reliable set of new ones. They both spent the whole trip on edge, hoping that any unfriendlies on the plane didn’t decide to involve civilians, but when they arrived at the airport, nobody seemed to be following them, and they went their separate ways without obvious incident.

 

Jefferson called the following morning to tell Napoleon that he had three days off unless she needed him to come in and clarify anything he’d written in the report he’d done in Zurich. He promptly undressed and got back into bed to sleep some more.

He woke around noon to the phone ringing; he picked it up and said, “Solo.”

“Did I wake you?” That was Illya. 

“Don’t you have the day off?” Napoleon said. 

“Yes. I thought we could get lunch,” Illya said.

Napoleon put the receiver on the nightstand and sighed into the mattress before picking it back up. _Didn’t you get enough of my company over the last week?_ would just lead to disappointment, because it was so obviously fishing for praise.

“That sounds nice,” he said. “Where were you thinking? Don’t say someplace near the office; I’m not getting out of bed for that.”

“So you were asleep,” Illya said. His voice was warm. “There’s a place. Near Grand Central.”

“That’s close to work, but I’ll let it pass.” Napoleon said. 

“You have a counter-offer?” Illya sounded close, and amused.

“No,” Napoleon said, because _come over and I’ll make you something_ was too much. He didn’t usually need hope; it indicated a lack of preparation, or an inability to make backup plans, neither of which were problems he usually had. But this was making him hope.

He’d managed to squash it by the time he arrived. The bistro was clean enough and smelled comfortingly of butter and beef broth. It felt like something right out of his stint in Paris, and he could have wrapped himself up in the ambiance of the place like it was a warm blanket. He ordered a club sandwich and Illya ordered an omelette, and after the waiter had departed, Illya unwrapped his silverware and said, “I have a confession to make.”

“I know who you work for,” Napoleon said, and Illya quirked a rueful smile.

“When you were at lunch with Gaby, when the radio wasn’t working.”

What had he said? He hadn’t given Illya away; he knew that much. “You got the radio working while we were talking.”

“Yes,” Illya said. “And you were bugged.”

“You overheard it.” 

“Yes.” Illya pushed his silverware and his glass of water to one side of his place setting, his movements smooth and assured. His wrists were exposed by his shirt, a black turtleneck under a nondescript brown coat.

“I didn’t give you away,” Napoleon said.

“No. Thank you.” Illya looked at him then. Napoleon knew how not to crack under pressure, but Illya knew all his weak points. Illya wouldn’t hurt him, not if he could help it, and he knew better than most what would hurt, but that didn’t mean something might not have made it necessary, and he was looking at Napoleon with something bright and brittle in his expression.

“Yes?” Napoleon said, at length. At this rate, their meals would come before Illya said another word. Had what Napoleon said been so bad as all that? It was a blur now, something about liking working with him and wanting to keep doing it if Illya did. The truth, because the truth was easier, especially with Gaby, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

“I enjoy working with you,” Illya said finally, but something about the intonation kept Napoleon from replying. “You are clever, and very resourceful, and good company when you aren’t trying to drive people away. And I did mind the play-acting, because it was too close to what I want with you, but wrong.”

Napoleon didn’t drop his glass, but only because he’d had the sense to put it down out of some instinct when Illya started talking. Illya’s ears were red.

“Yes,” Napoleon said, past the beat of his heart in his throat. He was smiling despite himself. “I thought so too.”

“Good.” Illya shook his head as if to clear it, then took a sip from his glass and looked out the window. 

“Do you want to come back to mine afterwards?” Napoleon asked.

Illya slanted a look at him. “Yes,” he said. “But not your couch, I hope.”

“No,” Napoleon said. He was still smiling. “I should think not.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **On consent** : There is a brief moment where a character with whom Napoleon has been flirting but whom he just rejected, touches him in a way to which he did not consent. The character is reprimanded and apologizes, but it is mentioned more than once that this happens to NS occasionally, and the moment receives several references in the course of the story.
> 
>  
> 
> Mr. Kuryakin’s cover names are a series of jokes about spy media. “Ian” of course refers to Mr. Fleming; McCallum to you-know-who, and Semenov to the Russian author of spy novels. 
> 
> The use of art as a laundering technique is quite modern. There was an article about it in the New York Times: <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/arts/design/art-proves-attractive-refuge-for-money-launderers.html>  
> though the approach suggested here would be somewhat different.


End file.
